No doubt, devout Muslims in Britain and elsewere are even now trying to come to terms with the facts that:

Stephen Timms and his pro-war colleagues receive taxpayer-funded salaries, pensions and awards, despite voting for the invasion of a sovereign state which posed no credible military threat to the UK, and for the attendant destruction of life and property in Iraq.

Ms. Choudhry faces life in prison for trying to assassinate a man who personally authorised the deaths of thousands of Iraqi military personnel and civilians who had committed no crimes against the British government or British nationals.

I wish them well in their efforts to find a sensible and peaceful resolution of this dilemma, and close with an excerpt from the words of Mr. Justice Cooke to Ms. Choudhry:

You intended to kill in a political cause and to strike at those in government by doing so. You did so as a matter of deliberate decision making, however skewed your reasons… I also hope that you will come to understand the distorted nature of your thinking, the evil that you have done and planned to do, and repent of it. You do not suffer from any mental disease. You have simply committed evil acts coolly and deliberately.

I hope the wisdom of these words won’t be lost on Mr. Timms and his fellow warmongers either.

15 responses to “Turning the mirror around…”

personally, I think the ability to assassinate government leaders is a great democratic right. many evil leaders in history have been assassinated. So for this reason, I do not believe the state should pay for security for Blair, Cameron or anyone else. they can hire their own security guards at their own expense if need be.

The ascribing of all Muslim lunacy on ‘blowback’ is wrong. Islam is suffering a weakness of violent extremism. This is an internal problem of Islam, one of the symptoms is blaming everything wrong in Islam on outsiders.

I see a lot of people who oppose Western intervention in the Middle East morphing into apologists for Muslim extremism.

I fully supported the prosecution of war in Iraq and also in Afghanistan.

I believed, and still to some extent do, that this supports interests that are friendly indirectly to British ones (which are liberal by axiom and definition – although our present governments are not liberal at all – and therefore which is not the same thing) which is to say: the slaughtering of foreign head-hackers and tyrannico-Stalinists, of whatever nation.

If a head-hacker like the murdering bastard Saddam, or whatever fella is in power in similar places, where they film public executions for example, was in power, then it is a duty of Libertarian Jihad to remove him (they are always male) and also if possible to execute him.

The head-hacker Hitler, and that other fellow Stalin his friend, and their friend Mao, would have got the same treatment from me had I been Secretary for War in 1945 (ish.) I would have gone and sat across them from their desk, and killed them with my pen-knife or whatever might come to hand, with my Permanent Secretary sitting shocked beside me.

They were not libertarians, because they presumed to coerce people into courses of action not friendly to them, like being forced into mass graves while alive, to be shot or buried.

I’m very sorry, but the planet is better off without these people.

The problem of resident politicians, who order things we do not like, remains. I’m not saying that people should go round trying to assassinate the buggers, for that sets a bad example to the rest of the world where we are trying to introduce liberty, which as we know is the Mother of Order.
It would be very inconvenient if we inculcated the idea that any politician who someone did not like, such as myself or Sean Gabb for example, was a legitimate target for assassination. What we have to do is persuade people that only socialist and collectivist politicians are such legitimate targets.

On second thoughts, while I hope the politician concerned suffered more pain than is involved in giving birth, and that he wakes screaming every night with recollections of the pain and terror, I think it’s generally a bad idea fo murder even Labour politicians.

Apart from when Spencer Percival was shot in 1812, it’s hard to think of any time since the 1640s when one Englishman has murdered another for political reasons. Indeed, I think the man who killed Percival was mad. This is one of the nice features of the English national spirit that our rulers keep telling us doesn’t exist.

I think it’s entirely reasonable to demand of the millions of people our ruling class has imported since 1948 that they should respect our public culture and not go about assassinating anyone they disagree with.

I hope Mr Timms is never the same again. At the same time, I’m glad the woman who tried to kill him has been banged up for the eighteen months that is the current meaning of life imprisonment.

Like you, Sean, I agree that Ms. Choudhry’s life sentence is entirely deserved. What’s more, given that she attempted to murder a fully paid-up member of the political class, I’ve little doubt the judge’s sentencing recommendation of 15 years will be adhered to or even exceeded. Any “good behaviour” reduction in her case will definitely include evidence of a profound change of heart on her part.

One of the hardest aspects to accept about liberty at an international level is that people really do have to work it out for themselves – otherwise, we’re back to the Jacobin rationale of invading, killing and occupying “the Other” for Johnny Foreigner’s own good. This simultaneously leaves smarter foreigners convinced they’re not free as long as their country is under foreign occupation, and less astute foreigners relieved of taking responsibility for key aspects of their own lives.

The goal-deficient, open-ended occupation of Afghanistan (again!) is but the latest example. Why are British troops still there nearly 10 years on? First the troops went in to “liberate” the country from Al-Qaida and/or the Taliban (the distinction between the two was quickly blurred)… then attention shifted to offering elections (of US-approved candidates, of course)… then to suppressing the opium trade (one of the previous British occupation’s more enduring legacies)… and now we’re on to “women’s rights”. What next? Saving the Afghanis from climate change?

Ironically, the latter would be a marketable rationale for occupying Pakistan at the moment; and no, Mr. Cleggeron & Co – please don’t vote for it.

Obe of the cardinal principles of Liberalism is that the laws are enforced with only the absolute minimum of official violence. Since the laws against murder can be and are enforced without Judicial Murder of defenceless prisoners (the so-called “Death Penalty”) it follows that executions are illiberal.

Killing political scum is counter-productive as it makes martyrs of them.
A small crowd rush the hack and his goons. The front ranks of the group are armoured Ned Kelly-style and they smother the shots from the gun goons and then grab and disarm the gun handlers while a small and highly trained and disciplined group administer a top-quality world-class beating to the political turd. The group would need to avoid getting carried away with righteous anger and beating the scumbag to death. Indead, at least one of the group should be a doctor or well-trained para-medic so that if the political scum does get hit too hard they can give the help needed to ensure the hack suffers no permanant harm.
The public, who might be very upset at the sight of a political hacks bulbbering spouse and kids at a funeral will instead be overjoyed that an overweaning arrogant arsehole has had a fist put in his/her face. Most people would not identify with an assassin but lots of people would be pleased at hearing that X or Y had been given a well-deserved good hiding and wish that they could have had a chance to punch the political hack themselves. The group would be caught of course, but dealing with a large group is always harder than dealing with a lone individual. The powers that be could try handing out long sentences by calling it a “terror beating” or some such tripe but that would not get much support from a populace who have many of their own beaten by muggers/criminals who then got away scot-free or received nugatory punishment .
I, of course, offer these merely as entertaining speculations. All subjects of the Crown should obey the law.

I seem to remember that some outfit called the “IRA” did things called “punishment beatings”.

In conjunction with carefully-and-strategically-focussed-punishment-explosions (and which destroyed property, not people, just like the “Neutron Bomb”), in places like Manchester and London, these were successful at persuading people that the IRA ought to control the government, which it of course now does.

Of course we ought not to murder polticians. But they could be sent to islands of various exciting kinds, where they could “live off the land” (possibly, or possibly not, depending on the island’s latitude North or South.)

I don’t approve of murdering Labour MPs, and let’s get this straight – in a fight between English Stephen Timms or Pakistani Roshanara whatever her name was, I would always on principle support the Englishman. Roshanara should be executed. But – SG this was my point – the state should not pay for the security of politicians. In most cases their parties would step in to pay.

Let me give an analogy. There are CCTV cameras everywhere. Sure they may cut crime in certain areas – but a society where you cannot commit crime owing to the depth of the surveillance is not free. I don’t mean I support committing crimes; rather than I support society being free enough that you could. In the same way, I don’t support killing Labour MPs, except after treason trials, but the ability to do so reflects the fact that MPs have to meet their constituents occasionally, and so there has to be an opportunity to assassinate them. To put them being glass shields everywhere would be repulsive, and in any case the state should not pay for enhanced security. Don’t forget SG, that I have to go about my daily life without a security detail, despite the fact that policemen no longer walk our streets. I don’t see why politicians should get a greater degree of protection.

I am sorry for my stupid typos in my last paragraph. That should have been:

Let me give an analogy. There are CCTV cameras everywhere. Sure they may cut crime in certain areas – but a society where you cannot commit crime owing to the depth of the surveillance is not free. I don’t mean I support committing crimes; rather that I support society being free enough that you could. In the same way, I don’t support killing Labour MPs, except after treason trials, but the ability to do so reflects the fact that MPs have to meet their constituents occasionally, and so there has to be an opportunity to assassinate them. To put them behind glass shields everywhere would be repulsive, and in any case the state should not pay for enhanced security. Don’t forget SG, that I have to go about my daily life without a security detail, despite the fact that policemen no longer walk our streets. I don’t see why politicians should get a greater degree of protection.

Trooper Thompson, I care more about the life of one of our soldiers in Afghanistan than about the lives of 10s of 1000s of Afghan villagers – so even though we shouldn’t be there and there is collateral damage, I would still save a British soldier over saving 20,000 Afghans given a moral dilemma.

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